a² Vincenzo Agnetti. Working together is a political act

Working together for Agnetti, after all, had been the incipit, as he would tell Tommaso Trini a few years later: ‘a first step’, an initial phase of his work that he called ‘Spontaneous intervention with friends’. By the end of the 1950s, Agnetti had become very close to Manzoni and Castellani, an elective affinity that would endure over the years beyond individual biographical events, and which was built on shared interests and dreams. At the time, Manzoni and Castellani were artists, while he worked in the field of electronic automation. Apart from writing about Azimuth, which testifies to his involvement in the group, in those years he wrote exclusively about and for Manzoni, with whom he was united by a special affinity on certain themes dear to them, which formed the humus of endless late-night discussions, at home around the steaming risotto he had prepared, or around Brera. Agnetti thought then that one could make art without making art, however by saying or writing. He would later state that writing and saying were, like the paintbrush, new tools indispensable to the artist.